you know I once googled how very organized housewives kept their homes super clean. And one thing they suggested was, if a task can be done in less than 2 minutes, do it right away.
And I have to think about this very often when depression tells me to delay doing things, if it tells me something is too much work right now etc.
If I can do it in less than 2 minutes I can do it no matter how exhausting it seems.
That’s what I tell myself. And it works!
I get more done and after 2 minutes I usually realize the pain doing this thing is not so horrible as my brain suggested. And then I keep going and expand the task and get real work done, holy shit
That’s…. actually brilliant. Two minutes is so short, it’s relatively an easy amount of time to FORCE yourself to work on something, even when you’re just completely deflated.
What works really really well for me is to compound annoying tasks that don’t require much thought with something actually pleasant. It took a long time to find the actual pleasant thing, but with audiobooks I can actually end up looking for chores to do because I want to continue listening to the book, and it doesn’t combine well with anything except the most mindless work.
That’s how I cleaned my bathroom top to bottom two weeks ago, after barely being able to pick up empty loo rolls from the floor for…well, months.
We’re not millennials, but most of us aren’t kids anymore.
We actually weren’t born with smartphones in hand – we spent our early childhood bit similarily to millennial. You are thinking about the kids born from 2006-ish that have been exposed to tablets, smartphones and Internet daily. (for example, I grew up rarely watching cartoons and my mother sometimes allowed me to play online for half an hour. That was it.)
So yes, we had the Internet and we love it now, but it wasn’t that essential in our lives up until the late years of primary school & middle-school.
We are savvy in tech & internet stuff and we adjust to new things immediately. It was a huge part of our teenage years and it is VERY important in our lives and we don’t think that the internet is a waste of time and danger because we understand it. We remember how to live without it.
We don’t see social media, technology and the Internet as socially crippling in general because we know that properly used, they are good. We don’t see spending time together with phones in our hand as any different as sitting in together with a newspaper, book or crossword. Meeting and spending time on the smartphone together(plus discussing over it) don’t have to be any less bonding than discussing a book or a movie in our opinion.
We know what a video cassette is. And CD. Same with flip-phones. Pendrives. Non-virtual DVD-rental. Desktop computers.
We used it, actually. Those items were part of our childhood.
We know that we’re ‘privileged’ in terms of medicine standard of life and technology, but we feel pressured.
We’re-entering adulthood in times when the whole world, whether in terms of politics, technology or work market, is changing as rapidly as it had never been changing before.
We feel like we had to change the world. We are expected to be responsible adults, focused on the future and aiming high while in high-school. We feel that we have to be better and better and normal teenage goofing around isn’t an option for us. We are being told that wanting to survive and wanting to have a simple, average life isn’t enough when sometimes, it is.
We feel that we have to change the whole wide world when in reality changing just our life and our close environment would be enough, but society didn’t really tell us that.
We are treated like adults and kids at the same time, not as teenagers we are (and yes, in my mind people in their early 20s should be allowed to be treated like teenagers).
We don’t hate older or younger generations.
Our coping system is usually sarcasm, cynicism, memes and Tumblr.
That doesn’t mean we all wanna die. That doesn’t mean we don’t have ideals. That doesn’t mean we’re pessimists.
We are realists. We know that hope is important but sometimes our dark humour is the only thing that keeps us going.
We are aware of our mental health and our mental illnesses and we want the older generations – actually, all generations, not to treat this matter as a taboo.
As the Silent Generation and Gen X, we suffer from a new version of Weltschmerz (source here).
(of course, those are general characteristics and they don’t apply to all of us or at least not all of them -in case that is not obvious for some people)
also people really seem to think that specifically children with adhd will suddenly become not distractable if you remove distractors like phones which is very much not the case lol they just zone out you idiots.
my parents did this with homework and i would sit there zoned out till 10 pm not doing shit because they turned the internet off
Neurotypical people tend to not understand that my ability to focus on something I’m not particularly motivated to do will increase tenfold if I can have a secondary task or background distraction with which to pair it. So, for example, if I’m in a boring meeting or have to listen to a webinar or something, my ability to stay tuned in to what’s being said will actually improve greatly if I’m simultaneously allowed to play a game or colour. Likewise, if I have a boring work project that involves inputting data into spreadsheets or something of that nature, I absolutely need to be able to listen to a podcast whilst I work. People think these sorts of things are signs of not being invested, but for me, it’s the difference between engagement and zoning out.
going thru phone pics and found this thing that was tacked up next to the toaster at my old job, if anyone needs some light toast eating reading material
quick protip: if someone is crying or freaking out over something minor, eg wifi not connecting, can’t find their hat, people talking too loud, do NOT tell them how small or petty the problem is to make it better. they know. they would probably love to calm down. you are doing the furthest possible thing from helping. people don’t have to earn expressions of feelings.
I’m just gonna put it out there that if someone’s freaking about something small, they’re really freaking out about something big that they’re trying to deal with, or something long term that’s been building up, and that little thing is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I don’t know, try and give people the benefit of the doubt. Don’t be the next straw on their broken back.
Needed this today.
People don’t actually go from 0 to 60. If you think they did, you have failed to notice how long they’ve been at 59.
People don’t actually go from 0 to 60. If you think they did, you have failed to notice how long they’ve been at 59.
I get stressed out really often, and the only outlet that helps is crying. The only times I do end up crying tho is at the smallest things that set me off (confrontation, being rejected, I lose a pencil, etc)
And yeah, ofc, I know it’s a dumb thing to cry about but plz don’t point out or joke about how I’m overreacting and/or being a crybaby. That actually just kinda sets me off even more.
Me: yeah so I just don’t have the energy to get up and make myself a sandwich or wait for something to cook so I just. Don’t
Her: why don’t you just eat the sandwich components without putting them together
Me:
Her: you can just eat a handful of cheese and some sandwich meat. You don’t have to make a sandwich.
Me:
Me: what
Therapists finding loopholes for mental illness things is one of my favorite things about dealing with mental illness because it really helps me understand that just because a reaction is Common doesn’t mean it’s Right. Does doing dishes stress you out a lot? Buy paper plates. Do your obsessive thoughts make you worry about leaving your curling iron on so you drive home from work to check? Just put the curling iron in your purse and bring it to work with you while we work on tackling where this worry comes from. Symptom management doesn’t have to look like drudgery.
i used to go days without showering because seeing my body was so upsetting that i would end up spiraling and then i realized i could simply turn the lights out. it took some getting used to but i’ve been showering with the lights off for years and it’s now one of my favorite parts of my day.
do whatever you want nothing is real and there’s no need to inflict unnecessary suffering on yourself just to try to seem “normal”
I love this post
Hmmm
These kinds of loopholes make life so. Much. Better.
all the websites im looking at to get help with my seasonal depression are like “r u feeling a wittle blue 😦 kinda down in the dumps :(( gotta lil rain cloud over ur head :(((((” no bitch im exhausted and miserable and want to die all the time should i drink more orange juice or what
I’m upset because I want to change the world but the world is too big and people are too mean
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” – Rabbi Tarfon
I needed to hear this
not obligated to complete the work, not free to abandon it.
daydreaming is often a coping mechanism for people who are often lonely or don’t receive a good amount of love in their life, so they make people inside their heads that will love them so they can feel the right amount of love.
Executive dysfunction is like all of your abilities are on cooldown and you’re mashing buttons to try to do anything but your brain is just like “i can’t do that yet. that’s still recharging. i can’t do that yet. that spell isn’t ready yet. that’s still recharging.”
artherra 